The elegant set of ‘Katie.’ The show is taped at ABC Studios in New York and syndicated across the United States.
(MONDAY, OCT. 22, 2012)—UPDATE: I learned late last night that the segment featuring Dr. Terri Orbuch has been postponed and will be rescheduled. When the producers announce a new air date I will let you know. Hope you can tune in to watch Academy Award-winning actress Susan Sarandon speak with Katie Couric and see both women engage in a bit of competitive sport!
The call came on a Monday in August, about a week after I had returned home to Richmond following the BlogHer conference in New York City. On the line was Brittany Jones-Cooper, a producer of Katie, Katie Couric’s new syndicated daytime talk show.
She and Couric had been at the BlogHer conference—Couric was featured in one of several keynote interviews, engaging in a lively discussion with BlogHer cofounder Lisa Stone, and issuing a clarion call for bloggers to participate in her new show. The television legend certainly came to the right place!
And, it would seem, so did I.
Back to that phone call. Couric’s producer had seen my blog, liked what I wrote, and asked if I could be in ABC Studios in New York on Thursday for a taping. Couric has employed several ingenious methods of integrating social media into her program; one way is to have two bloggers in the audience for each show. The theme of this particular program would be divorce.
Now as we all know, I happen to know a little bit about that subject.
And so it was that three days later, my husband John, who grew up about 20 minutes outside of the city, drove me into Manhattan. A bonus of the trip? We’d take some time to explore all of the landmarks of his youth—something I’d wanted to do ever since meeting him.
What a whirlwind! Just arrived backstage at the ABC Studios, still wearing my traveling clothes. TMSW got dressed and made up in record time!
I’m in the cobalt blue jacket, wearing a necklace and an Apple MacBook Pro. At my right is blogger Deesha Philyaw, of ‘Co-Parenting 101.’
You’re reading about all of this now because the program I was invited to attend airs on Monday, Oct. 22, at 3 p.m.on NBC12 in the Richmond market. You’ll want to visit the Katie website to check your local listings; in some markets the program airs at 2 p.m.
Katie Couric chats with the audience before the taping. Check out her gorgeous shoes!
The featured guest? One of my favorite actresses—the smart, sultry, simply ageless Susan Sarandon—as admired for her social activism as she is for her award-winning performances. Single after a long-term partnership with actor Tim Robbins, she turned 66 earlier this month; she shares her thoughts about commitment, relationships, and what it’s like to be an older—albeit steadily working—actress in Hollwood. Also on the show is Dr. Terri Orbuch, aka ‘the love doctor,’ offering useful marital advice—from a surprising source.
After the taping, Sarandon and her two dogs, Rigby and Penny, posed for pictures with Katie. Remind me to tell you a cute story about Rigby!
The colorfully-garbed audience of ‘Katie’
I’ll be tweeting LIVE during the broadcast beginning at 3 p.m. Eastern Time. If you’re not already following me on Twitter, please hop over to the next window and click “follow.”
The producer also asked me to write an essay for the program’s website about finding love after divorce. (I happen to know a little something about that, too.) KatieCouric.com published “Learning to Love Again” on Oct. 22, 2012. The post appears as “The ‘L’ Word” on this blog.
I hope you’ll have a chance to tune in or follow my LIVE tweets during the broadcast. Enjoy! And as always, thanks for reading!
The founder of the social media consultancy Digital Royalty has a new book out tomorrow, Oct. 2. On Sunday she was a guest of Melissa Harris-Perry’s on MSNBC, talking with other panelists about the influence of social media on politics, and the change-agent behind the sports and social media phenomenon covered in a Forbes article. And today (winking here) she’s making her second appearance on my blog. What a whirl!
As you know, I met Amy Jo at the BlogHer 12 conference in New York City. And here I must digress to tell you that I felt an immediate bond with her when she shared her experience of finding a lump in her breast the size of a golf ball. As a survivor of thyroid cancer, I’ve become hard-wired to relate on a deeper human level with those who have either had cancer or a cancer scare. As someone I admire once said, we become members of a club no one ever wanted to join. And it’s something of a paradox, because once admitted to the club, you want to remain a member in good standing, if you know what I mean. Amy Jo’s honesty—her fearlessness—in sharing her experience speaks to the very essence of what is so intrinsically valuable about social media: honesty. Being real. Or as Amy says in her book, “showing some skin.”
So I’m sitting in the Pathfinder session, listening to Amy discuss innovation, intention, ideas, influence, and inspiration—and writing as quickly as I can to take down what she is saying: “Coloring outside the lines without crossing the lines.” Sharing the corporate mission statement of Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh: “Be real and use your best judgment.” Explaining the value of “Random Acts of Shaqness.” (You must read this book. And yes, she’s referring to Shaquille O’Neal.)
In the midst of my flurried note-taking I had an epiphany: As a blogger, I’m ipso facto on social media. But I wasn’t really on social media. It was quickly becoming apparent that I had much to learn and I’d better get cracking. And that’s why I’m reading her excellent book, and why I want to tell you about it. I think that it’s a game changer for any public persona, corporation, brand, organization, or entity not yet on board with the new rules of the game. For those already using social media to enhance their relevancy, it will provide an entertaining and enlightening overview of where they have been. I suspect even they will learn things they didn’t already know.
On paper (in pixels?) it doesn’t seem as though I’d be such a social media newbie. I began writing content for Web 1.0 back in 1998 on behalf of Oberlin College. I was wired in for the advent of email, and only just slightly behind the curve on Facebook and LinkedIn, although I caught up fairly quickly. I did a bit of blogging and video interviews, and even composed tweets during our 2.0 phase. And yet I hovered there. It wasn’t until starting my own blog in August 2011 that I truly recognized the importance of communicating regularly and with intention across diverse social media platforms. I’m sure one reason is because I’m now working for myself, and so I feel a sense of urgency. But I am also a writer who blogs. And like every other writer who blogs, I want people to read me. How does a blogger find readers? On social media. Duh.
And so I advanced on the board from Facebook and LinkedIn until I reached Twitter. I opened my own account (kind of feeling the way I did when I first opened a checking account); passed “Go,” and in a year attracted more than 400 followers. (This is more than double what I had before the BlogHer conference, which shows you how much I learned in a very short time). These past weeks I’ve slowly begun to build my presence on Pinterest and Google+. This weekend I wrote my bio for Huffington Post and figured out how to upload a video to YouTube and connect it to what you’re reading now. Just today I sent out my first Instagram. (It’s fitting, on many levels, that it was a photo of Amy Jo’s appearance on the Melissa Harris-Perry show.)
@AmyJoMartin discussing social media & politics on @MSNBC’s @MHPerry #TeamRenegades http://instagr.am/p/QNA_tOSDze/ (Amy Jo is on the left.)
When you start a blog, and hope for it to be meaningful and authentic and actually read by people, it soon becomes apparent that it’s not enough just to hit “publish.” Bloggers control their own distribution. Those who take what they do seriously are not just members of the media, they are also the means of the media—the studios and the control rooms and the printing presses and the distribution houses. It’s exhausting, quite frankly—especially if you’re a team of one. Even a renegade team of one. Even a renegade team of one with an awesome husband to help with things like shooting the video you’re about to see.
This is why Amy Jo’s book is important to me. As a team of one, I have to think about economies of scale. If I spend three hours writing a blog post and only 30 people see it, I’ve just poured four minutes of my life for each of those 30 people. If 300 people see it, I’m starting to get some traction and make some impact for the time I’ve invested. If 3,000 people see it, well, you can do the math. The greatest impression one of my post’s has had was last November, when WordPress featured an essay of mine on ‘Freshly Pressed’ and more than 5,000 people read it over a two-day period. That truly felt relevant. That’s what a writer hopes for.
Please don’t misinterpret what I’m saying here. Every one of my readers is valuable to me. Whether 30 people visit a post or 3,000—each reader means something to me. Each has invested his or her own time in reading what I had to write. Economies of scale work both ways, after all. That’s why I hope I’m providing interesting, informative, and entertaining content for you.
Time is money, as they say. And I’m as busy as the next person—I also run a business and freelance. So these things inevitably begin to matter, especially if your blog is part of the foundation of your livelihood.
Amy Jo learned something early on about the time factor, and she has shared the anecdote widely—in a TEDx talk, at conferences, and in her book. Her former boss, who wasn’t wild about all of this social media business, challenged her by sliding a sheet of paper across her desk. On it were written three words:
Work. Family. Self.
“Choose,” her boss told her. “You can’t have all three.”
Since Amy ultimately left that employer and formed her own business, I naturally wondered if she ever did have to end up choosing. I asked her about it, and she replied via email:
“Since founding Digital Royalty a few years ago, I have been able to design my own day, whether that means working late at night while on the elliptical machine, or taking a conference call from a mountaintop. Through creating Digital Royalty, and especially Digital Royalty University, I have been able to find my Royal Bliss. That’s what balance is to me. It’s not a perfect equilibrium. It’s finding that sweet spot, where your purpose, passion, and skill collide.”
I love that, don’t you? The “sweet spot where purpose, passion, and skill collide.” That’s what balance is. And now, before this post gets too unbalanced by growing too long, I think it’s time to let everyone know who won a signed galley copy of Amy Jo’s book. Watch this video to find out!
A note about the contest: The winner was drawn from the Facebook fans of The Midlife Second Wife. A drawing held Friday evening, Sept. 28, did not yield a winner because I was unable to reach the person whose name was drawn despite two attempts via Facebook. A subsequent drawing, represented in the above video, was held Sunday afternoon, Sept. 30. Out of fairness to my fans, members of my family were excluded from this drawing. I should also note that I received a signed galley copy of Renegades Write the Rules for the giveaway, as well as a free download for my Kindle. Other than that, I received no compensation to write about the book.
If you would like to like the Midlife Second Wife on Facebook, click the embedded link at the start of this note. You can also follow me on Twitter: @midlife2wife. Thank you for your support!
(Want to help me celebrate? Read through to the end of this post to find out how!)
Five months ago today, I hit “publish” on the very first post for The Midlife Second Wife. What a long way we’ve come in such a short time! I thought you might like to hear about some of these developments, and a few new offerings planned for the coming months.
Last night, the blog welcomed its 12,001st visitor to the site. I have to say that this number has me a bit flabbergasted—I had hoped to reach 10,000 visitors after my first year of blogging. If the trend continues, 20,000 readers will have passed through these pages by our one-year anniversary.
Your fellow subscribers now number 273: 133 are following by email or readers, 25 are following the comments, and 115 join us by way of Twitter.
I’m going to add another opportunity today for readers to climb aboard: a site based in Sweden, Bloglovin.com, acts as a sort of storage locker for people who follow a lot of different blogs, organizing them all in one place. I’ll be adding a widget to my site so that Bloglovin’ lovers can share the TMSW love.
TMSW has won two awards from bloggers: the Liebster and the Versatile Blogger Award. In November, TMSW was featured on WordPress’ “Freshly Pressed,” an event that brought more than 5,000 visitors to the site in less than two days. Also in November, the highly respected publishing network BlogHer syndicated one of my posts. Fifty-five of you like me, you really like me, on Facebook, too.
So what’s next? Well, I’ll continue posting two to three times each week. (I also hope to pick a quiet month when my freelance work subsides and do another NaBloPoMo with BlogHer). You’ll see the recipe files getting thicker, and you’ll have more interviews with experts to enjoy. I’ll even begin sprucing the place up a bit. I’ll be asking for your opinion in a few readers’ polls, too.
We now have our 110 charter members of the Midlife Second Wives’ club, and they can expect to hear from me in the weeks ahead. I need to think of an idea for the second-tier membership group, too; if you have any ideas for that, please let me know! I’ll also get to work on our Midlife Second Wives’ Hall of Fame.
And by all means, please send me your ideas for articles, post your comments, and share the articles you like on Facebook.
While we’re on the subject….I have a favor to ask you. It’ll help us all celebrate this five-month milestone!
Close your eyes, think back, and pick out your favorite post from the last five months. Got one? Good. Now, email a link to that post to three of your friends, letting them know about the blog, and invite them to sign up. (This is important: send me a blind copy of your email so that I’ll know where the new subscribers are coming from.) I’ll enter your email in a drawing for a special prize for each new subscriber that comes my way through your efforts.
(I promise it will be useful and tasteful, not like the Leg Lamp “Major Award” that the Old Man received in A Christmas Story.)
As if it’s not enough work to brine or deep-fry or roast a turkey for Thanksgiving, some people go whole hog and make a turducken: a chicken sans bones stuffed into a duck sans bones stuffed into a turkey. Sans bones. I remember the first time I read about this strange bird, years ago in the New York Times. Each time that I thought it would be fun to try to make one, I remembered how much work it is to clean the kitchen after just one fowl-centered feast, let alone three. But this week I discovered a no-mess, no-fuss method for making turducken, using book titles instead of birds! In a brilliant flash of Twitter ingenuity, Doubleday Books started a hashtag hat-trick for bibliophiles: the literary turducken, or, to be precise, #literaryturducken.
Readers mix together three book titles to craft a zany new concoction. In my opinion, this “top tweet” from the Kansas City Star took the blue ribbon for cleverness, erudition, and wit:
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Gone with the Wind in the Willows.
I jumped right into the fray, and Tuesday night, when I should have been sleeping, began tweeting as quickly as I could think of combinations. Here are a few from my own Twitter feed:
Play it as it Lays On the Road Under Milkwood
The Handmaid’s Tale of Two Cities of Salt
ABC of Reading Lolita in the Tehran Conviction
Then I thought I’d put a little spin on the game, playing with titles containing numbers and adding a long poem and a musical theater title into the mix:
The Threepenny Opera in Four Quartets at Slaughterhouse 5
This was fun! It didn’t involve chopping onions, and it satisfied my craving to be creative at Thanksgiving during a year when I wasn’t doing a lick of cooking.
I kept at it:
The Invisible Man and Superman It’s Superman!
I’m very fond of this next one, but disappointed in myself for leaving off the article in the McCullers’ title:
Ballad of the Sad Breakfast at Tiffany’s Naked Lunch Café
I raided the theatrical canon for this one:
Krapp’s Last Tape Measure for Measure of the World
I wrote a few more, and finally sleep won out. But the next day, during our long road-trip, I not only occupied myself in the car by adding more to the hashtag, I also got John hooked on the game. He devised this one:
‘Twas in the Heat of the Night Before Christmas the Iceman Cometh
I think that, on balance, the ones I came up with during the day were sharper than the ones I cobbled together while I was starved for sleep. What do you think?
A Farewell to Arms and the Man Who Knew Too Much and Came to Dinner
O Pioneers! How Green Was My Valley of The Dolls?
Death Comes for the Archbishop, the Man Without Qualities, And Ladies of the Club …
Beloved Jazz Song of Solomon
While I was playing—and admiring the literary zip of many other tweeters—I noticed that media outlets were also paying attention. Mashable wrote about the game, as did the Huffington Post. Katy Steinmetz of TIME magazine had a great one:
The Sun Also Rises As I Lay Dying On the Road
It occurred to me that if you’re not on Twitter and hadn’t heard of this phenomenon, this post could be my gift to you: you now have a new game to play on the long ride home after your visits with far-flung family.
I love my Kindle—its efficiency, its portability, and the way the device instantly transports me—like some digital form of astral projection—into the world of a book simply because I thought of a title and clicked a key. But the love that I have for my Kindle will never surpass my love of books.
I recently tweeted, in essence, that I was cheating on my Kindle by reading Walter Isaacson’s best-selling biography of Steve Jobs in hardcover, which I bought the other day. Using a traditional media format to read about the greatest inventive entrepreneur of the digital age strikes me as an irony if ever there was one.
A slight digression about tweets. I know, I know. You’ve read me blog about them before, comparing them to chocolate. And I’m not recanting. But if you’ll permit me to mix and match my metaphors, I’d like to add that I also find these marvelous digital encapsulations of information akin to the notes that we midlifers used to pass surreptitiously in school. (Like a convert to Catholicism, there’s no zealot quite like a late-adopter.)
This morning, a tweet traveling down the Twitter conveyor belt so captivated me that I had to pass it to my neighbor in the next row by re-tweeting it. (Admittedly, a book cannot do that.) Here is what I discovered when I unfolded the intriguing morsel:
old book smell.
Did you know?
“Lignin, the stuff that prevents all trees from adopting the weeping habit, is a polymer made up of units that are closely related to vanillin. When made into paper and stored for years, it breaks down and smells good. Which is how divine providence has arranged for secondhand bookstores to smell like good quality vanilla absolute, subliminally stoking a hunger for knowledge in all of us.”
—Perfume: The Guide
Isn’t that a fascinating piece of new information? Isn’t that a lovely notion? And it makes so much sense (intended pun) at every level. Most of us love books because of all that they evoke—past memories, past experiences, past sensual and tactile pleasures.
Have you ever read Pat the Bunny to a child? If not, then try to recall the very first book shipment you ever received, and what it felt like to see your name on the outside label, to open the package, and to hold in your small hands the book that you yourself selected and purchased. My own memory takes me back to St. Mary’s Elementary School in Elyria, Ohio, and the TAB book club. I can still remember those catalogs, and how I would circle each book that I coveted. It was a good day at school when those shipments arrived.
Part of a bookstore’s lure is the way that it feeds all of our senses. I’m thinking especially of an old bookstore, one that deals in rare and used books. The memories that these bookshops elicit, especially the olfactory ones, can be profound. I think that Diane Ackerman was correct to have started off her book, A Natural History of the Senses, with the sense of smell, which she calls “the mute sense.”
Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary, and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the Poconos, when wild blueberry bushes teemed with succulent fruit and the opposite sex was as mysterious as space travel…Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines, hidden under the weedy mass of many years and experiences. Hit a tripwire of smell, and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.
The aged-paper smells of an old bookshop remind me of my grandmother’s attic, where piles of folded newspapers and books commingled with old sewing patterns and scraps of fabric, and the light streamed in through narrow windows, revealing trumpets of dust motes hovering above the steamer trunks and dress forms. These objects, combined with the properties of physics and memory, are called forth by the scents of mustiness, of age and locked time. Madeleines did it for Proust. For me, it’s a bookstore.
Do you remember your first time visiting a library? I recall walking with my mother down the sandstone sidewalks to the Elyria Public Library’s children’s room. It was located in the basement of a grand old mansion. One had to walk down sandstone steps and hold on to a black iron railing to enter the space. It was a place of mystery for one who had just learned how to read, as impressive as a church, although not quite as intimidating.
Photo courtesy of Elyria Public Library, Elyria, Ohio
Smell, sight, touch, hearing, and taste. I have book memories for all of these. Even for the last one. I’m sitting in the library—I’m in high school now—and I’ve just run my Number 2 pencil through the hand-cranked sharpener that is mounted on the wall. I return to the heavy wooden table, sit down, and begin poring over my notes for a book report, absentmindedly chewing on my freshly-sharpened pencil.
No, a Kindle can’t do that for you.
An exegetical acknowledgement: The original tweet that elicited this post came from blogger Iris Blasi and was re-tweeted, where I discovered it, by the Book Lady of The Book Lady’s Blog. As we crawl further up the conveyor belt, we see that Blasi credits CuriosityCounts (by way of book editor Peter Joseph) for the image, which, ultimately, takes us all to the original source, the book Perfumes: The Guide.
I was thinking about Twitter the other day, and of course that reminded me of chocolate.
You mean it’s not that way for you?
If you’ve ever seen the classic I Love Lucy episode, the one where Lucy and Ethel get a job in a chocolate factory, you’ll know where I’m going with this. The chocolate candies come down the conveyor belt, and the intrepid duo must wrap each piece before it reaches the next stage in the packaging process. Things start out well enough, but the conveyor belt quickly speeds up, and the candies move faster and faster down the line. To Lucy and Ethel’s dismay, many unwrapped chocolates are swiftly making their way past the point of no return. Their martinet of a supervisor will be furious, the girls will lose their jobs, and the only way to avoid catastrophe is to hide the evidence —in their toques, down their uniforms, and in their mouths, as this picture illustrates.
My Twitter feed reminds me of chocolate speeding down a conveyor belt. I want to grab it all (i.e. read each tweet), but it can’t be done. I would have to either monitor my iPhone 24/7, or set other tasks aside to regularly review huge helpings of tweets at one sitting—dipping into a vast candy bowl of information. Other things clamor for my attention. One must sleep and eat. One wants to hug and kiss one’s husband, and otherwise participate in the analog world.
And of course, there’s all the writing and blogging that one must do to meet the November NaBloPoMo challenge.
🙂
So I do the best that I can, assiduously marking the tweets that I want to revisit for closer scrutiny, skimming linked articles with the alacrity of Lucy Ricardo twisting waxed paper on a chocolate, and tweeting or retweeting—lobbing little gifts out into the world that I think you might enjoy.
How do people manage all of this? I’m a late adopter, no question. I’m still learning my way around the Twitterscape. (A blogger called The Late Bloomer Bride wrote one of the best lines I’ve ever read about coming to the party late: “I knew at an early age that I was a late-bloomer.” Good stuff.)
One thing I did adopt early, however, was a love of chocolate. And it was a tweet last month, from the Huffington Post, that gave me the sweetest gift of all: the news that there are health benefits to the rich, dark, decadence that I’ve enjoyed ever since I cut my first tooth.
Huffington Post’s Healthy Living reported on a Swedish study that found a link between high chocolate consumption and a 20-percent decrease in stroke risk among women.
This is not the first report to determine that chocolate, not unlike red wine, can be good for you, and this is not to say we should all make a mad dash to the kids’ Halloween stash as if it were the prescription counter at Walgreen’s. As with all indulgences, moderation is key, especially since chocolate is not a low-calorie, low-fat, low-sugar food item. But if you are thinking of sneaking a bit from their haul, go for the dark chocolate. It’s better for you.
John and I just finished dinner, and will shortly be enjoying chocolate cupcakes for dessert. But if you’re following me on Twitter, you no doubt already know that.
Dear Friends and Followers of The Midlife Second Wife,
The site has just welcomed its 1,500th visitor. I can hardly believe how many of you have peeked in the windows at my home-away-from-home on the Web. To date, here’s a by-the-numbers look at TMSW since its August 24, 2011 launch:
38 Blog Subscribers (35 by E-mail, 3 by WordPress)
30 Daily Visitors, Overall Average
All of this has got me quite gobsmacked, you know. Thank you from the bottom of my midlife-but-hopefully-healthy heart for reading and supporting The Midlife Second Wife.
Since we’re online, I can’t really propose a toast (well, I suppose I could, but it wouldn’t be as much fun as it would with us gathered in a room, holding flutes of Champagne). What I can do, however, is this:
I herewith announce the formation of The Midlife Second Wives’ Club. All of you who are now following the blog with your subscription, either by e-mail or as a WordPress blogger, are Charter Members of the club. That’s 38 Charter Members.
The Midlife Second Wives’ Club will be limited to 110 Charter Members. Here’s how I arrived at the number: John was 56 when we got married; I was 54. Add 56 and 54 and you get 110. This means that there is still room for 72 more subscribers to become Charter Members.
As you know, membership has its privileges. I cannot predict where The Midlife Second Wife will take us, but should the day come when TMSW merchandise becomes available, Charter Members will receive discounts. A book deal? Charter Members will receive autographed copies. A film? (Yes, I know. I dream big.) If there’s ever a premiere, Charter Members will receive the full red-carpet treatment.
Why? Because you have been with me from the very beginning. You’re my supporters, my posse, my peeps and tweeps. You deserve some perks!
What, you might ask, must I do to become a Charter Member of The Midlife Second Wives’ Club?
Well, if you’ve already subscribed to the blog by entering your e-mail or blog ID on the left-side of the screen, you’re in! And while we’re on the subject, I want to assure you that WordPress and I have a very strict privacy policy; neither I nor WordPress will ever share your e-mail address with anyone unless required to do so by a court of law. And come on: how likely is that to happen? Right.
So consider this scenario: You’re a Charter Member, but your partner/spouse/best friend is not. You don’t want to attend a movie premiere without him or her, do you? Ask them to join you in subscribing to the blog. (And by subscribing, I mean following. There’s no cost to you.) There’s room for 72 more in the VIP suite, so let them know!
What, you might ask, happens when the 73rd person subscribes to the blog? Are they, and those that follow after, relegated to some dank, subterranean room? You know me. I couldn’t do that. I will devise some secondary level of membership, and a tertiary level, and then whatever level comes after tertiary, to ensure that all followers of The Midlife Second Wife will feel the love. But I cannot in good conscience ignore the first 110. You are, and always will be, my inner circle.
Now go out and encourage your friends and family to follow the blog. And if you’re already liking it on Facebook or following it on Twitter but haven’t signed up here, please do so. I want you at that film premiere!
You’ve subscribed. You’ve liked “The Midlife Second Wife” on Facebook. You’ve shared the blog with your friends and family. Some of you have even commented on these early posts. For this support, I thank you. You are awesome! You are the reason I’m here.
Since August 24, 2011, when TMSW became the new kid on the blogosphere, the site has received 770 views. And no, this doesn’t include my own visits.
😉
Those of you here from the beginning will notice a difference in the layout. I’m now using a beautiful WordPress template called “Chateau.” Rather appropriate, don’t you think? This is, after all, the home of the Midlife Second Wife.
You will also notice a snazzy new logo, courtesy of my immensely talented brother-in-law, Brian Rich. But wait. It gets better. In his off hours, Brian designs and makes jewelry. See this picture of me? Notice the necklace I’m wearing? That’s a Brian Rich creation. The Midlife Second Wife didn’t just gain a husband; she gained a jewelry designer and graphic artist.
Here are a few other new features: on the left you’ll see that some new categories have popped up. “An Open Book” is a place where you can go to learn more about the books mentioned in my posts, or simply see books that have been important to me. Think of this as the library in the Midlife Second Wife’s chateau. “The Blogs of Others” lists sites of other bloggers that I like and want to support. Feel free to check them out sometime. There’s even a place where you can read some of my published articles.
Another new feature allows you to print a post or share it via email or on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or WordPress’ own “Press This.” You can also indicate if you like a particular entry. You’ll find these options at the end of each individual post. Just click on the post’s headline to get there.
You know that I’m sharing recipes, and you can look for them every Wednesday. But what you don’t know is that I’ve been busy working to further enhance the site. I plan to interview experts on a variety of subjects, and in the coming weeks there will be a new category for you to enjoy—“Monday Morning Q & A.” I’ll be adding sections on health and wellness, money management, relationships, and arts and culture. If there are other topics that you’d like me to explore here, please drop me a line at marci.keyword@gmail.com.
While we’re on the subject of great expectations, I want you to know that my goal is to post new content for you three times each week. I hope you’ll find what I write fun, inspiring, and worth sharing with others. WordPress’ terrific feature—a community for bloggers called “The Daily Post”—will help me meet this goal. It’s a place where I can ask for help when I need it and encourage other bloggers when I can.
If you’re already reading my blog, I hope you’ll encourage me with comments and likes, and good will along the way.
The Midlife Second Wife ™ 